


287 Days

by Saereneth



Series: Recovery isn't Easy [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Loneliness, Medical Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2302574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saereneth/pseuds/Saereneth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Agents North Dakota, New York, and Texas tried to infiltrate the facility early before dawn this morning. They were unsuccessful, and were forced to flee by our security forces.”</p><p> </p><p>They were still alive, then. Thank whatever was watching out for them. “I don’t see why you’d need me to tell you how they managed it, Counselor,” Wash stated flatly. “Those three were some of the best we had, and Agent York was an infiltration specialist. I’m almost more surprised they didn’t succeed.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	287 Days

The grey light of the planet’s dawn was what woke him that morning. Usually Wash wasn’t so lucky, and it would be the dreams or the pain that woke him up. It seemed like his mind had granted him a reprieve, as he almost felt like his old self when he opened his eyes and sat up from his small cot.

Reality quickly closed in again once the sterile white walls and faded blue carpet hit his senses. This place where they’d taken him to “recover” was a hideous combination of hospital and prison. At least before, when he’d been healing from the burns and broken bones from the crash, he’d been surrounded by other patients and nurses. This room was his alone, and the locked door between him and the hallway kept him from interacting with anyone outside of his so-called medical staff.

As if his interactions with the Counselor were at all medical in nature. It was a constant balance with that man; a constant fight to not reveal how much he knew even when his brain and body wanted nothing more than to scream it into the rafters. He’d been through interrogations that were less intense, and he’d never had to fight his own mind to keep his thoughts to himself.

Like the other 287 days he’d woken in this room, he quietly got up, stretched himself out, and walked over to the bathroom that had no door. He went through the motions ingrained in him after years in military service, quickly showering, shaving, and brushing his teeth before dressing in a fresh pair of pale green medical issue pants and a white tshirt. That completed, he went back into the main room where his breakfast was waiting on a tray along with a new book for the next few days; something on early Earth military history, looked like.

Agent Washington’s days usually passed in the same way. First his shower and grooming, during which breakfast would appear in the doorway of the main room. Every few days he would get a new book, after he’d placed the old one on an outgoing food tray. There were never more than three books at once. 

After breakfast, he would run through a series of drills and exercises that could be done in a limited space in order to keep himself in shape. For what, he couldn’t say, since he didn’t believe he’d leave the facility alive.

Lunch was brought in by a nurse who took his vitals before leaving the way she came. They needed to keep an eye on his physical state, he’d been told, so that they could determine when he was ready for another “treatment.”

He dreaded the treatment days. He’d tried to fight his way out of them, but after the first few uses of the gas injection vents in the room he’d determined fighting was pointless and went along with them in order to avoid the fogginess and nausea that came with the paralytic gas. Once they’d led him to a special room, electrodes would be fitted around his head for monitoring his brainwaves, and a special interface system would be hooked into the neural net Epsilon had nearly fried during his brief stay. This interface, he was told, was meant to stimulate his brain to return to its normal functioning after being damaged by the implantation and subsequent severe brain injury in the MoI’s crash.

All Wash knew was that it hurt like hell. He’d gone through six nurse attendees since his arrival; most of them broke down after enough time hearing him scream.

After being carted back to his room (he could never stand after a treatment), he’d be given a short break before someone would come in to talk to him in the guise of therapy. For the first few weeks, it had been the Counselor himself, but once it became clear that Wash wasn’t going to reveal any interesting details about Epsilon or the A.I.’s secrets, the Counselor had been replaced by a string of bland, completely replaceable doctors.

Once that was over, he would be left alone to his thoughts and his books. The boredom had been the most annoying aspect initially, but as the months dragged on, Wash was finding that the loneliness was starting to weigh on him as well. At best he saw four people a day, and then only for an hour or two. After the constant press of friends and teammates in Freelancer, the lack of contact was causing a permanent tightness to settle in his chest.

For all that the monotony and isolation were getting to him, the appearance of the Counselor shortly after breakfast was not a welcome change. He didn’t know what would bring the man back after so long, but he had to expect it was nothing good.

“Your friends nearly broke into the facility today, Agent Washington,” the Counselor said, not bothering with any greeting. That was also unusual; it generally took fifteen minutes or more for the man to get to any sort of point. “I don’t suppose you’d know how they managed that, would you?”

The leap in his heart at hearing about his friends quickly changed to a sick feeling in his stomach at the implications of the word “nearly.” How had they been stopped, and more importantly, were they still alive?

“I don’t know how I could know, or even make a guess, given that I don’t know which friends you mean,” Wash replied, hoping to at least find out who had come after him. Even worried as he was, it was a deep relief to know that even after so long, he had mattered enough that someone had come after him.

“Agents North Dakota, New York, and Texas tried to infiltrate the facility early before dawn this morning. They were unsuccessful, and were forced to flee by our security forces.”

They were still alive, then. Thank whatever was watching out for them, then. “I don’t see why you’d need me to tell you how they managed it, Counselor,” Wash stated flatly. “Those three were some of the best we had, and Agent York was an infiltration specialist. I’m almost more surprised they didn’t succeed.”

The Counselor shifted on his feet, his lips drawing together in a tiny display of displeasure. “Indeed,” he said, his voice tighter than it had been. “But we were hoping you might be able to tell us why they would choose this particular facility, out of all the Freelancer holdings.”

Wash blinked, his mind running over what he’d heard so far. He was missing something, but what? “I assume they’d come to rescue someone, Counselor, after all, this is a medical facility.”

The other man tilted his head, looking like a cobra accessing its target. No matter how he’d managed to throw the Counselor earlier, the man was game ready now. Wash braced himself for whatever was coming, hoping against hope that the other Agents were still alright.

“Agent Washington, I do apologize,” the Counselor stated, his voice slick and sweet like it always was when he felt he was in control. “I did not mean this facility. Your friends did not come for you; they attempted to infiltrate the facility holding the remains of some of the Project’s failed A.I. experiments.”

The tightness in Wash’s chest returned and seemed to spread throughout his chest. Even as he heard himself spouting off some rote answer about intelligence gathering, all he could hear in his mind was a constant repetition of they did not come for you.

287 days and counting.


End file.
